A new index by TutorSpace has seen Switzerland take the crown as the "smartest country" in Europe. The report gave high praise for the quality of the Swiss school system overall, but found room for improvement around literacy.

Smartest people in Europe report by TutorSpace

To create the index, rather than giving people IQ tests, TutorSpace analysed the quality of education in 44 European countries. In the report, company CEO Patrick Nadler said that he hoped the study would help countries develop their education systems by highlighting key areas for improvement.

In the report, each of the 44 countries were rated through the following categories:

• Education quality and access: PISA scores for maths, reading and science, years of schooling, percentage of the population with tertiary education.
• Higher education and research: Number and quality of universities, number of researchers, scientific and technical journal articles and patent applications per million people.
• Literacy and digital literacy: Number of books published per capita, percentage of people using the internet.
• Government investment: Government expenditure on education, research and development.

Using data from UNESCO, the World Bank, the United Nations and OECD, TutorSpace gave each country a score of 100 in each category, with a weighted average used to place countries on the list.

Europe-wide, Nadler noted that educational standards vary wildly, especially between larger economies. “It is surprising that out of the largest countries in Europe, only Germany and the UK make an appearance on this list,” he noted, calling for more funding for technology, research and overall school systems so that “more people will be able to improve their situations and share their skills and knowledge.”

Switzerland rated as the smartest nation in Europe

In the list, Switzerland was rated as the “smartest in Europe” with an overall score of 81,1 out of 100. The alpine nation was just ahead of the Scandinavian and Nordic nations, with Denmark (77,87), Finland (77,57), Iceland (73,36), Norway (72,84) and Sweden (70,53) rounding out the top six. Albania, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina occupied the bottom three.

TutorSpace gave Switzerland high praise across all the categories, with the country gaining the second-highest scores for quality and access, higher education and investment. They noted that the Swiss government and cantons spend an average of 14,24 percent of total budgets on schools, and that today a third of 25 to 64-year-olds have a qualification from a university or school of higher education.

The findings back up what was revealed by the official PISA study from December 2023, which found that Switzerland has the eighth-best school system in the world. However, both studies noted that there is room for improvement: for instance, the PISA study found that while Swiss literacy scores were good, they were some distance behind the rest of the front-runners. While based on different factors, literacy was also Switzerland's worst score in the TutorSpace study.

10 smartest nations in Europe

In all, here are the 10 “smartest countries” in Europe, according to the TutorSpace study:

1. Switzerland (81,1)
2. Denmark (77,87)
3. Finland (77,57)
4. Iceland (73,36)
5. Norway (72,84)
6. Sweden (70,53)
7. Belgium (69,12)
8. The Netherlands (68,97)
9. Estonia (68,87)
10. United Kingdom (67,83)

For more information about the study, check out the official index.